Office.com is the new portal

Go to Office.com and sign in with a free Microsoft account to see this view of Microsoft's free Office services. The Office on Demand links at the bottom are only there for paid subscribers with an Office 365 Home Premium account.

Office documents are color-coded

In SkyDrive, documents are color coded so you can distinguish them at a glance: Blue for Word, orange for PowerPoint, green for Excel, purple for OneNote. Unsupported file types appear in gray.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Create a new document directly from SkyDrive

From anywhere in SkyDrive, you can click the Create menu to display this list of supported document types. After you enter a name, the new document opens immediately for editing in the corresponding Office Web App.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Share a document (or a whole folder) from SkyDrive

You can share a single document, a picture, or an entire folder from SkyDrive. Sharing a folder makes anything you add there available to anyone with permissions for that folder. Shared folders are not synced via the SkyDrive for Windows utility.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Editing an Excel spreadsheet in a browser window

The Excel Web App looks remarkably like its desktop equivalent. Many advanced features are missing, but it's possible to get a lot done here. Look in the lower right corner, and you can see that two people are working on this document simultaneously.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Limited charting options

Using the Excel Web App lets you create a chart of the right type, but your advanced formatting options are severely limited. You can't change a background color, for example. For that, you need to open the associated spreadsheet in the Excel desktop app. (By the way, did I mention that I'm using the Excel Web App in Google Chrome here?)

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

SkyDrive keeps track of previous versions of Office documents

You don't need to explicitly save most Office documents when editing them in a Web App. They're saved automatically, and SkyDrive also keeps copies of previous versions, so you can recover something you deleted from an earlier draft and then regretted.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Google does a so-so job with Excel files

Yes, Google Drive will open a spreadsheet save in Excel's native file format, but you might not like the results. This default view is essentially a print preview, and the chart in the native file doesn't appear in its proper place.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Converting to Google format improves editing

When I used the Open With menu to convert this Excel spreadsheet to Google Sheets format, I got access to this full set of tools, and the spreadsheet survived the trip apparently intact.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Google's charting tools are bare bones

You can make a few customizations in the Google Chart Editor, but the options are far from extensive. While this option is good enough for making quick charts, you'll want a much more powerful app to make presentation-worthy charts and graphics.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Familiar Word features in the Word Web App

This editing page with the Home tab open looks remarkably like the desktop version of Word. In the document itself, you can see familiar features like highlighters (yellow's the classic color, but 15 others are available), spell check (see the red squiggle?), and a quick formatting toolbar that appears when you right-click.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

To add comments in the Word Web App, stop editing

This feature might not be immediately intuitive. You can toggle any Word document (ditto for Excel and PowerPoint) between Reading View and Edit View. In Reading View, you'll find a Comments command above the document, which in turn opens the sidebar shown here. But if you choose Edit Document, the comments aren't available.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Google's old-style menus

Two things are noteworthy about this document as created in Google Docs. First, it's black and white, unlike the colorful Google Drive home page. And second, the interface is largely driven by pull-down menus, with a single row of toolbar buttons that can't be customized.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

PowerPoint Web App at a glance

If you've used the desktop PowerPoint program, you'll feel right at home with the Web App. This is the default Editing View (there's also Reading View and Slide Show). Notice that two people are editing this presentation simultaneously, and the comments pane is available for conversations about any slide.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

An extensive selection of PowerPoint slide layouts

When you create a new slide using the PowerPoint Web App, you get this long list of layouts. Compare them to the equivalent from Google.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Google's presentation app is mostly menus

Compare this short list of themes to the much larger selection of graphic options in the PowerPoint Web App (in the previous slide).

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

OneNote works especially well for collaboration

Google doesn't have an equivalent to OneNote in its collection of online apps. The OneNote Web App allows two or more people to share information in a single notebook, with changes synchronizing practically in real time. Note that we've turned on the option to show authors' names next to additions.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

OneNote's Windows 8 app is also free

Of the four main Office apps, only OneNote currently has a native app that runs on Windows 8 or Windows RT. This app is especially useful for serving as the target for the Share charm. Select some text from a web page, click the Share charm, and choose OneNote as the Share target. Your selection is pasted into its own new page (or the current page, if you prefer), along with a link to the page.

Published: February 28, 2013 -- 23:01 GMT (15:01 PST)

Photo by: Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNet

Caption by: Ed Bott

Touch Mode in the Office Web Apps

This is one feature I haven't seen many people mention before. When you use the new Office Web Apps on a tablet or a PC with touch hardware, you'll see a Touch Mode icon in the toolbar in the top left of the web page. On this Slate PC, it's selected, providing extra room for touch targets. Note that the pop-up formatting menu changes shape in Touch Mode, too, with bigger, easier-to-hit targets.

SkyDrive and Office Web Apps versus Google

It's hard to think of Microsoft Office as anything other than the archetypal Windows desktop program. But while no one was looking, Microsoft's free online apps and storage turned surprisingly powerful. Are the free apps good enough to use in place of Office?

Read More

Google does a so-so job with Excel files

Yes, Google Drive will open a spreadsheet save in Excel's native file format, but you might not like the results. This default view is essentially a print preview, and the chart in the native file doesn't appear in its proper place.